How things look through an Oregonian's eyes

July 30, 2014

Mayor Peterson, City Manager Norris, and other City of Salem officials just can't seem to please anybody these days.

When they tried to take over part of public Riverfront Park for a private access road, they were slammed by park lovers. When they tried to foist parking meters on the Historic District without asking citizens how they felt about this, 9,000 Salemians signed a "No Way!" petition that halted this plan. When they had a notion of turning the library into a police facility and relocating it to a parking garage, library lovers showered them with "Are you crazy?" messages -- which ended that particular insanity.

They've ticked off the Downtown Dog Protection League by holding a Dog Days of Summer event in the afternoon of freaking August, the hottest time of the year. Yikes! Hot dogs! Hot paws! Current forecast is for 89 degrees. Could be hotter a week from now.

In an email Roger Yost, owner of several downtown buildings (including the Reed Opera House), has taken the City of Salem Urban Development folks and other public officials to task for messing up the previously well-run Dog Days event.

So sorry you're taking the popular "Dog Days Downtown" and renaming it "Dog Days of Summer," back into August, for the mistaken term that included the word "dog."

When I was president of Go Downtown, we moved the popular event to June when weather was more predictably tolerable for our best four-legged friends. It easily created more traffic downtown, by those experiencing the traffic, than any previous "Dog Days." And did so for three straight years.

For the record, here's one of the historic reasons that precipitated the term "Dog Days.":

Dog Days were popularly believed to be an evil time "the Sea boiled, the Wine turned sour, Dogs grew mad, and all other creatures became languid; causing to man, among other diseases, burning fevers, hysterics, and phrensies." according to Brady’s Clavis Calendaria, 1813.

Had my Berner, Leila, still been alive, I would not be taking her into 90 degree heat on hot sidewalks to celebrate an ill-timed promotion by a City Manager's steering committee, which should have been disbanded, along with its programs, June 30, 2014.

I will have our managers put out big bowls of water, but you do no favors for our downtown merchants or our beloved animals, by encouraging inhumane activities in the name of a humane cause and presumed commerce. You are demeaning, not revitalizing, our Downtown.

She personally took over the downtown organization for decidedly lousy reasons, then proceeded to mismanage it so badly business owners voted to do away with the Economic Improvement District rather than watch Norris squander their funds by screwing up previously effective promotional activities like First Wednesday.

As Yost pointed out, the steering committee Norris appointed to rubberstamp her actions (she became a one-person "board of directors," accountable to no one other than herself) is still stumbling onwards to nowhere even though the Economic Improvement District doesn't exist any more.

One would think that Norris and other City officials would have gotten the message by now: Stop screwing up downtown. Your incompetence is hurting, not helping, efforts to revitalize the Historic District.

Now that the Dog Lobby has weighed in, maybe this loud Woof! Woof! will finally wake up City Hall.

July 28, 2014

Tonight I watched another shameful performance by the Mayor and City Council of Salem (Oregon), who voted unanimously to approve the destruction of Howard Hall, a building that the Historic Landmarks Commission voted unanimously to preserve.

Interesting, to say the least.

A citizen commission made up of experts on historic preservation and the ordinance governing historic buildings such as Howard Hall considers all of the evidence, along with the law, and concludes that Salem Hospital hasn't met three of the four criteria required to destroy the building.

A political body with strong ties to the Chamber of Commerce and Salem's version of the "1%," which in the past has gone along with some horrible decisions tied to back-room dealmaking, miraculously looks at the same evidence and laws, then concludes that, hey, no problem, Salem's largest employer can do whatever it wants with an irreplaceable historic building.

With Howard Hall, the City Council didn’t wait for Salem Hospital to file an appeal; the council decided to review the Historic Landmarks Commission decision all on its own — an unseemly action for a supposedly neutral quasi-judicial body.

Cynicism about public officials, elected and appointed, is high. I keep hearing “The fix is in; the city council is going to do whatever Salem Hospital wants.”

Well, councilors, remember that your job isn’t to please a large corporation. It is to honor facts and the law. This is what members of the Historic Landmarks Commission did. I urge you to uphold their decision to save Howard Hall.

It was a foregone conclusion that Salem Hospital was going to get its way, because the current folks who run City Hall have never seen a request from a big corporation they didn't foam at the mouth to rubberstamp.

The indefensible absurdity of the City Council decision tonight was made clear by this vignette after the vote had been taken and a brief recess was happening before the next hearing.

I'm sitting in the front row, just in back of the chairs occupied by Councilors Laura Tesler and Chuck Bennett. They're chatting with each other.

I walk up to them and ask each, "So you don't think it is possible to save Howard Hall and also have Salem Hospital build an adaptive playground elsewhere on the eight acre property, using the 87 excess parking spaces the hospital wants for a parking lot much larger than code requires?"

Tesler and Bennett ran like scared bunnies. Tesler said "No comment" over her shoulder, which made me feel like a big-time investigative blogger (thanks for that, Laura). Bennett said "You're just going to write whatever you want, Brian, so what's the point in answering?"

To his credit, Bennett did stay around for a bit more discussing of the variance Salem Hospital got for those 87 extra parking spaces, and also, I believe, to cut down a bunch of trees that otherwise wouldn't be allowed to be removed.

This was the big elephant in the room that no one on the City Council had the guts to point out, though many other people who testified did.

Namely, that it was outrageous for Salem Hospital, a health care provider, to shamelessly pit the blind community against the disabled children community. Among ordinary citizens, there was complete consensus that Salem needs more adaptive playgrounds. And a near consensus that Howard Hall should be preserved.

Now, since the Mayor is fond of calling Salem a "collaboration capital," one would think that the City Council would be interested in finding a win-win on this issue -- preserving Howard Hall and also building an adaptive playground.

This is what I wanted to ask Tesler and Bennett about: Why isn't it possible, as so many people said it was, to preserve historic Howard Hall, which has deep significance to the blind community, and also build an adaptive playground for disabled children -- either elsewhere on the eight acre property or at a nearby public park?

When they refused to address this question, I knew for sure that, yes, the fix was in for Salem Hospital.

If a public official has a good reason for voting the way they did, they're happy to answer questions about the vote. But if their vote is based on no good reason, just political expediency, people like me who want to know the basis for the decision are viewed as an annoyance.

The neighborhood association, SCAN, has appealed the variance that allows the excess number of parking spaces and tree removals. I tried to get Bennett to explain why the City Council couldn't have denied the hospital's request to demolish Howard Hall, stating that if Salem Hospital really wants an adaptive playground, it needs to use some of those excess parking spaces rather than site it on the footprint of Howard Hall.

I got no answer, even though this was a very reasonable question.

Nobody on the City Council thought of asking it, though I sure did at numerous times during the hearing. Hospital staff testified that the adaptive playground was an integral aspect of the planned rehabilitation facility, if not an essential aspect.

Well, if this is the case, why wasn't an adaptive playground planned from the start? Why did it suddenly pop up in plans for the property only after Salem Hospital withdrew its first application to the Historic Landmarks Commission when it thought the Commission was going to reject it?

(It turned out, of course, that even with the adaptive playground, the Historic Landmarks Commission rejected the hospital's request to demolish Howard Hall.)

The reason is, pretty clearly, that Salem Hospital used the adaptive playground as lobbying ammunition, not because it has a deep abiding commitment to a playground for disabled children. If the hospital did have such a commitment, it would be happy to preserve Howard Hall and use part of its unnecessarily large parking lot for an adaptive playground.

However, no city councilor, nor the Mayor, asked the obvious tough question of Salem Hospital staff: "If we decide to preserve Howard Hall, will you still build an adaptive playground elsewhere on the property, since you have said it is such a valuable, if not necessary, part of the rehabilitation center?"

If the hospital had said "Yes," this would have been the win-win solution that neighbors and the blind community had been looking for. If the hospital had said "No," this would have shown that the adaptive playground was just a bargaining tool for Salem Hospital, not a reflection of the hospital's commitment to disabled children.

Unfortunately, the fix was in. No tough questions were asked of Salem Hospital staff, just of those who wanted to preserve Howard Hall.

It made me sad, and sick in a way, to watch tonight's proceedings. Salem deserves better from its elected officials. City councilors and the Mayor did their best to pretend that they had agonized over a tough decision whether to preserve Howard Hall.

But in the end, the vote was unanimous in favor of a large corporation and against the interests of ordinary citizens. Like it almost always is in City HallLland. Shameful. But we've seen a lot of shameful actions by City officials recently.

July 26, 2014

Next Monday, July 28, the Salem City Council will continue with a public hearing about Howard Hall, a historic landmark that is the last building remaining from the now-closed School for the Blind.

The Historic Landmarks Commission voted unanimously to preserve the building, denying Salem Hospital's request to tear it down so the hospital could have a parking lot with 87 more spaces than is required by code.

Members of the blind community aren't at all persuaded by Salem Hospital's offer to put a playground for physically challenged children where Howard Hall is now.

They know this is just a ruse to distract from the fact that (1) Salem Hospital tore down an adaptive playground before in a previous expansion that did away with Bush Elementary School, (2) there is plenty of room on the property for both an adaptive playground and Howard Hall if the hospital gives up some of its unnecessary parking spaces, and (3) the meaning of Howard Hall to the blind community is much greater than the token commemorative plaques and such Salem Hospital is offering after the historic building is torn down.

I realize that most people in Salem don't know or care much about Howard Hall. But the importance of the City Council's review of the Historic Landmarks Commission decision extends beyond what happens to this single structure.

In written testimony I submitted to the City of Salem yesterday, I talked about how what is happening in 2014 with Howard Hall bears a lot of disturbing resemblance to a debacle of a decision in 2013 to allow U.S. Bank to remove five beautiful, large, healthy trees in the downtown historic district for no good reason.Download Howard Hall testimony 7-25-14 (PDF file)

In each case a big-moneyed, powerful corporation wanted to do away with a cherished bit of Salem. U.S. Bank was desperate to cut down five gorgeous trees in the Historic District; Salem Hospital is eager to take a wrecking ball to historic Howard Hall.

In each case ordinary citizens were strongly opposed to what the large corporations wanted. Not a single person, other than U.S. Bank staff, thought the five Japanese Zelkovas should be removed. And it sure seems that many more people are in favor of saving Howard Hall than of demolishing it.

In each case a City citizen committee strongly recommended that the Salem landmark be preserved. The Shade Tree Advisory Committee looked at all the facts and said “prune the trees, don’t cut them down.” The Historic Landmarks Commission made findings of fact and conclusions of law that led to a decision: Howard Hall should be saved and repurposed.

In each case political machinations came into play. Public Works Director Peter Fernandez was all set to order that the trees be pruned, not cut down, until he was contacted by U.S. Bank president Ryan Allbritton — who reminded him of a backroom deal they’d made years before to have the trees removed, before an application to do this was even submitted by the bank as required by law.

With Howard Hall, the City Council didn’t wait for Salem Hospital to file an appeal; the council decided to review the Historic Landmarks Commission decision all on its own — an unseemly action for a supposedly neutral quasi-judicial body.

So Monday's City Council meeting is a chance for City officials to do things right this time. Honor facts and the law. Don't give in to lobbying from special interests.

Sure, Salem Hospital is the biggest employer in town. I'm sure plenty of pressure is being put on the Mayor and city councilors from Salem's Power Structure, our version of the 1%.

Just remember, City officals, that your duty is to serve the entire public, not a powerful subset of it.

I have plenty of experience with elected officials ignoring facts and the law so they could play political games. So do dozens of my neighbors, for my wife and I led a five-year fight against a subdivison in rural south Salem that threatened our ground and surface water (wells and a spring that feeds a community lake).

Just as with Howard Hall, elected officials (in this case, the Marion County Board of Commissioners) got voluminous testimony from neighbors and other affected people that strongly argued against approving the subdivision.

Yet we ended up on the losing end of several 2-1 votes when Commissioners Sam Brentano and Patti Milne would say, "I just feel like the developers should be able to do what they want with their property."

Feel?Are you freaking kidding me?, we and our neighbors would think, sitting in the hearing room after spending hours and hours testifying, explaining why facts and the law required disapproval of a subdivision being built on high value farmland.

Conservatives and liberals alike -- we were angry when we saw elected officials shirking their duty to be fair, open-minded, and impartial in this quasi-judicial land use proceeding. We eventually won when the case ended up in Marion County Circuit Court.

So I say again: Salem City Council, don't give in to special interests or your own personal political preferences. You must have very good reasons to overturn the carefully considered decision of the Historic Landmarks Commission to preserve Howard Hall.

Feeling Salem Hospital should be able to do what it wants with the building isn't good enough reason to overturn that decision. Not even close. If you go that route, your unjustified approval will be overturned by the Land Use Board of Appeals. For sure.

Which won't look good. Or be good. This will be another sign that folks at City Hall have stopped serving the general public and have become a tool of special interests.

My post features a wildly funny You Tube video where Portland commissioner at that time Randy Leonard sets out to prove that Portland Mayor at that time, Sam Adams, is not gay. I loved watching it again.

If anyone needs evidence that Portland is way cooler than Salem, here it is. I can't imagine any Salem city councilor or Mayor making a video like this. Sadly.]

July 24, 2014

According to Salem city councilor Chuck Bennett, who represents the downtown area, City officials are looking at replacing the current free unlimited parking policy with "time-limited" parking.

This could mean several things. Going back to a two-hour limit. Or installing parking meters, the City's goal before 9,000 signatures on a citizen initiative petition to ban meters and time limits dashed that dream.

Bennett emailed me a response after he'd gotten my message asking if a report was true that he'd talked at a neighborhood association meeting about the council moving forward with parking meters again.

No, I said the city is in the process of replacing parking meters in the Capitol Mall area with an updated system and will be looking at changing the current 24/7 free parking system downtown back to one that is time limited.

The word "back" implies a return to two-hour limits downtown with no parking meters. However, other people have told me that plans are being laid to resurrect the parking meter proposal that met a well-deserved demise last fall.

It wasn't voters who said "no way" to downtown parking meters. The Salem City Council decided to adopt the language of the citizen initiative, which otherwise would have been voted on in last May's primary election.

Sponsors of the initiative wanted to have a city-wide debate prior to the election about the pros and cons of parking meters. The fear was that Mayor Peterson and the eight city councilors weren't really in favor of banning meters and time limits; they just were playing a political game in approving the initiative so it could be undermined sooner rather than later.

Regardless, City officials now own the parking policy that they voted in on their own. If they didn't want meters and time-limits banned, they shouldn't have put that language into Salem's parking ordinance.

So it was crazy for Councilor Bennett to refer at the neighborhood association meeting to "the Carole Smith Project" being over.

Yes, Carole Smith was a prime mover behind the initiative drive. And if the initiative had been passed by voters, then arguably it would be accurate to say that she (along with others) brought the parking meter ban and unlimited onstreet parking into being.

But since the Mayor and city councilors decided to bypass voters and implement these parking policies on their own, they now are the ones who own those policies.

I haven't had any trouble parking downtown since unlimited parking went into effect. I'm not aware of any statistical evidence showing that it is more difficult for people to park downtown now. All we have, so far as I know, is anecdotes about increased parking problems -- which aren't reliable.

So what City officials need to do is what they didn't do before: involve a broad cross-section of the public in a open-minded discussion of downtown parking policies. Downtown business owners. Frequent visitors to downtown. Downtown residents. Everybody.

Unfortunately, the current crop of folks at City Hall are terrible at this -- collaborating in an honest, open, transparent, trusting manner with a diverse group of "stakeholders." They much prefer top-down decision-making, where the Power Structure tries to sell a pre-determined course of action to the public.

This didn't work very well before.

As evidenced by citizen uprisings to (1) a proposed takeover of part of Riverfront Park for a developer's private access road; (2) a notion to convert the Salem Public Library to a police facility; (3) charging a regressive streetlight tax; (4) building an unneeded, unwanted, and unpaid for $425 million third bridge. And, of course, (5) putting in downtown parking meters.

In another blog post I'll discuss how wiser and more functional city governments elsewhere have worked closely and collaboratively with downtown business owners to make parking meters a success.

The key, as laid out by noted parking expert Donald Shoup, is to make sure that every penny of parking meter revenue is used to make a downtown area more attractive to visitors. Not, repeat not, to pad City coffers or pay for parking garages.

Rather, Shoup says:

Consider an older business district where most stores have no off-street parking, and vacant curb spaces are hard to find. Cruising for free curb parking congests the streets, and everyone complains about a parking shortage.

Charging market-rate prices for curb parking would increase turnover, and reduce traffic congestion. The convenience of a few vacancies would attract customers who are willing to pay for parking if they don't have to spend time hunting for it. Nevertheless, merchants fear that charging for parking would keep customers away.

Suppose in this case the city creates a "parking benefit district" in which all the meter revenue is spent to pay for public amenities that can attract customers, such as cleaning the sidewalks, planting street trees, improving store facades, putting the overhead utility wires underground, and ensuring public safety.

The meter revenue will help make the business district a place where people want to be, rather than merely a place where they can park free. Spending the meter revenue to improve the area where it is collected can convince merchants and property owners to buy into the idea of market-priced curb parking.

There isn't much chance that the current Mayor, City Manager, and city councilors understand what it takes to form a collaborative working relationship with all of the stakeholders who would have to buy in to a downtown parking meter policy as described by Shoup.

Given the "my way or the highway" top-down bureaucratic attitude in evidence at City Hall, downtown business owners and others are justified in saying No! to parking meters, and possibly even parking time limits -- since the City sees a two-hour limit more as a way to generate revenue through parking tickets, than as a way to vitalize downtown.

July 22, 2014

My wife, Laurel, and I are 65. We reside on 10 non-easy-care acres in rural south Salem, Oregon.

We're trying to decide where and how we want to live if, or when, we decide to move from the home we've happily lived in for 24 years. It's a tough decision, as related here, here, and here.

Recently we visited our first retirement community.

We've browsed online and requested brochures before. But we'd never toured a retirement community. Touchmark Bend is of the "continuing care" variety. It offers options from detached cottages to home care for those with varying health care needs.

Mattie Swanson sat down with us and ably explained what Touchmark Bend is all about. No hard sell. No selling at all, really, since it isn't much needed (the facility is almost 100% full, with a waiting list).

Laurel and I weren't hugely attracted to Touchmark Bend, though we could easily understand why others would be. It's nicely designed, in a beautiful area along the Deschutes River, nestled in a terrific city, Bend.

After our tour we drove a short way south to Sunriver, a resort community with about 20% full-time residents, the average age of whom is close to ours (66 for men, 64 for women). We drove and walked around some, trying to pick up the vibe of the area.

It didn't seem quite like us either. Which got me to thinking...

How the heck do retired people decide where they want to live?

Swanson told us that retirees older than us, in their late 70's say, aren't as used to moving as us 65 year old "kids" are. So it is tougher for them to decide to leave the home they may have lived in for 40 years or more.

Well, I bow to her expertise as a retirement community counselor. But my wife and I aren't finding it easy to decide whether we want to move somewhere else, and if so, where that "somewhere" would be. Here's some quasi-philosophical musings on why that is.

One's life is obviously different than stuff within that life. At our age, where we live casts a big shadow, a huge one, over our entire life. We don't have a work life. We don't have a big social life. We don't have a child-raising life. We're at home most of the time, in a nature-filled, quiet environment.

Choosing something new to bring into our home life -- a car, computer, clothes, pet, or whatever -- is much easier to decide on than changing our entire life. We can easily visualize how new stuff would fit into our existing life; it is much tougher to visualize living in a different place, in a different way, in a different environment.

Most retirees like their current home. The AARP reports that "Nine out of 10 people older than 65 aim to live in their homes independently for as long as possible." When my wife and I were younger, we moved because afterwards we'd be in a better situation: a nicer larger home, a place where we'd found a job, some other reason for packing up and leaving.

Now, we like where we are.

We're just finding that the work to keep up our home and property appeals to us less and less. Plus, we have a lot of ties to where we are. Many memories. Many dozens, if not hundreds, of trees that we've planted over the years and have now grown tall. Fields cleared of blackberries and poison oak that give us pleasure.

Happy here now, but for how long? This is perhaps the toughest of the tough questions.

We talked about this with Mattie Swanson when we visited Touchmark Bend. Here we are, 65, fit, healthy (aside from a few minor complaints). Why should we consider leaving our home, where we're happy, and moving somewhere less desirable that offered health care options we don't need now?

The future is unknown. Happiness lies in the present moment.

Neither, we, nor anyone, knows what the future will bring. It seems crazy to give up a lifesyle that pleases us now, in order to be prepared if one or both of us becomes ill, disabled, or infirm in the future. But is it really crazy? Swanson said that most of those who buy into Touchmark Bend view this as the last place they ever will live, since the continuing care options allow for this.

OK. I can see why this appeals to some people. Yet what if Laurel and I happily lived where we are into our 80's, then suddenly die together in a car crash? Wouldn't it be better to do this, than to move to a "safe and secure" retirement community where we wouldn't be as happy? But again, who knows what the future will bring?

What doesn't kill you makes you stronger. A related issue concerns us. Many people about our age downsize, moving to a condo or whatever that requires little inside or outside maintenance work. With our 3,200 square foot home and ten natural acres, there always is something that needs doing, fixing, maintaining.

I hate this. I love this.

Hauling cut branches to a burn pile in a field irritates me. After I'm done, the work feels satisfying. Part of the reason we're as physically and mentally healthy as we are is that our house and property drive us crazy. Go figure.

I worry that a stress-free retirement community would cause me to go bonkers. But then, sometimes our current situation has the same effect on me. Maybe I just need to accept that wherever I live, and however I live, I'm going to go bonkers some of the time, and be content some of the time. That's life.

Which brings me to some final thoughts.

I've read that about 50% of happiness is genetically determined. Circumstances determine maybe as little as 10%. The other 40%? Intentional activities, volitional choices. So here I am, worrying about where we should live -- which is part of that 10% of happiness.

The author felt that through mindfulness and meditation, that's about how much happier he feels he became. So seemingly if I devoted myself to changing the way I look upon my circumstances, I could live anywhere and cancel out crappy circumstances that otherwise could crash my happiness by 10%.

Thus, maybe it doesn't matter so much where we retired folks live. Life is going to be kind of good, and kind of bad, no matter where we are. The delusion is believing that if I just moved here, or there, everything would be great -- all of the time.

Bottom line for us: my wife and I are going to keep looking into other places we might want to live. If one feels right for us one day, we'll move. If not, we won't. Pretty damn simple.

But of course life won't be that simple. It never is. Which is why life is so satisfying: its always full of surprises.

July 19, 2014

Don't get me wrong: I love the Salem Art Fair. I've gone to it every year since I moved here in 1977. But after attending the 2014 fair last Friday, my wife and I have come to a conclusion:

The Salem Art Fair is feeling old and tired. It needs to make some changes.

Now, it could be argued that we are the ones with the problem. After all, if we liked the fair more in the past, and the fair hasn't changed much, then isn't it us who need to make an attitude adjustment?

Well, yes and no.

But in our view, mostly no. Certain things have always bugged us about the Salem Art Fair. Here I'm just expressing publicly what we've thought for a long time privately.

However, I'll admit that going to the Oregon Country Fair in Veneta, outside of Eugene, the Friday before our Salem Art Fair visit as we customarily do, brings into stark contrast what the Oregon Country Fair does much better. (Photos of our 2014 Country Fair excursion are here.)

In a nutshell, it comes down to a sense of community and creativity. The Salem Art Fair claims that it has this in two home page videos. My wife, Laurel, and I don't feel it much, though.

When we go to the Oregon Country Fair, we feel that we've entered a loving, creative, embracing realm where fair visitors, fair organizers, and fair participants (vendors, entertainers, and such) are All One. Which is far out, dude.

Sure, I understand that Salem and Eugene are very different cities. And that the Salem Art Fair and the Oregon Country Fair are very different sorts of events. Yet Salem could learn from what the Country Fair does so well.

Here's a grab-bag of Salem Art Fair gripes and ideas for improvement.

(1) Make entering the fair more inviting. We know some people who have stopped going to the fair after a fence was put up and an admission fee charged. This doesn't bother us much. We'd like a more festive feeling when we pass through the fence, though. Didn't there used to be brightly colored banners on the outskirts of the fair? How about having kids (of all ages, 7-70) in costumes greeting fairgoers warmly and humorously?

(2) Have more Salemians taking part in the art and music. Over the years local artists with booths at the fair seem to have become fewer. Maybe this is due to the jury'ing process. Regardless, I didn't see many artists with Salem as their home town. Local musical groups also seemed rare to non-existent. Showcasing talent from our area would foster more of a sense that this is "our" fair, a community event.

(3) Embrace spontaneity and unexpectedness. At the Oregon Country Fair, we never know what is going to be around the next corner even though we attend every year. That fair has plenty of arts and crafts, and also plenty of non-amplified street (well, path) performers. They don't interfere with acts on the main stage; they just bring some energy and surprises to the fair-going experience. The Salem Art Fair feels unduly staid and controlled to us. Isn't art unpredictable?

(4) Offer healthier and more creative food. Health-minded vegetarians that we are, Laurel and I have learned to eat lunch at home before we go to the Salem Art Fair. There's really nothing to eat that appeals to us. Every year there are the same food booths with, by and large, the same fare. Other than a raspberry Moo (milkshake, sort of), we ate nothing at this year's fair. How about inviting some folks from Salem's burgeoning food cart community so fairgoers have more eating alternatives?

(5) More interesting main stage music, please. I'll admit that we haven't gone to hear the evening headliners at the Salem Art Fair for a number of years. We used to, though, when there were bands that appealed more to our musical tastes: upbeat, lively, energetic, out of the mainstream. This year blues seemed to be the core offering. That's fine in moderation; but how about some more youthful, ethnic, unusual, danceable, and edgy musical groups with singers?

(6) Model artistic strangeness and uniqueness. Every volunteer at the Salem Art Fair should be strongly encouraged, if not required, to look fantastical -- in his or her own creative way. Putting on the same fair t-shirt doesn't cut it. Likewise, encourage fairgoers to indulge their inner artist. This is a big part of what makes the Oregon Country Fair so enjoyable: people-watching, since most fair-goers use this as an opportunity to express themselves creatively. Again, shouldn't the Salem Art Fair be about art? In all of its varied forms.

(7) Maybe loosen up some on the artist selection criteria. I have no idea how the juried artists are picked who become exhibitors at the fair. My wife and I have just noticed that over time, the art seems to have become more mainstream -- if that is the right word. Recently someone told me that she prefers non-juried art fairs because the artists are more eclectic. Maybe the formal artistic quality isn't as high, but the sense of Wow, cool, I've never seen that before is greater. Plus, some of the artists at the fair have been there forever -- or at least 10-15 years. This makes the fair seem overly familiar to those of us who go every year.

I guess my overall critique of the Salem Art Fair is that it's organized too tightly.

Not exactly uptight, but that word kind of applies. My wife and I want to feel more energy, creativity, and spontaneity when we attend the fair -- recognizing that Salem is what it is, not Eugene, Ashland, or Portland; we've got to work with what our community has to offer and is comfortable with.

That said, Salem has a lot of unexpressed potential, just as the Salem Art Fair does. The ideas I've shared here flow from a desire to see this marvelous community event become steadily better, continuously evolving and changing, just as art does.

July 17, 2014

This may sound strange, but it's true: at the age of 65, I can't remember when I've ever felt in better shape. (Note: my memory is pretty damn good, so this isn't senility talking.)

Reason is my bright yellow StreetStrider Summit 8r -- an outdoor elliptical bike.I got it last December. I rode it through Oregon's wet and cold winter. I've continued riding it in Oregon's dry and hot summer.

The StreetStrider is a super enjoyable exercise. I must have gone about 560 miles by now, mostly on multi-use trails at Salem's Minto Brown Island Park. Almost always I do my thing three days a week, usually riding about 7.5 miles in 45 minutes or so.

There's uphills, downhills, and flats. All fun on the StreetStrider. Along with the fun comes an amazing workout. After I'm done I feel like every part of my body, from toes to shoulders, has gotten some great exercise.

I'll confess to feeling superior to the many bicyclists who also use the Minto Brown trails.

Yes, they can go faster than I can. And yes, it's easier to ride a long distance on a regular bike. But the full-body workout of the StreetStrider is way superior for building core strength. Plus, the lean-to-turn steering of the StreetStrider engages my entire body in a way that bicycling doesn't.

I'll repeat one of my usual lines when someone says "Wow, that's cool!" and I take a few minutes to stop and talk with them about my ride.

At first I was worried that the StreetStrider was akin to a late-night TV merchandising ripoff, since it is only sold online and I hadn't tried it before I bought it. Believe me, it isn't. This is a quality piece of equipment.

And I'm getting zilch, nada, nothing, for saying that. I believe StreetStrider has a referral program, where you get $50 if someone you talk to ends up buying one. I haven't signed up for this. When I extol my StreetStrider, its because that's how I feel about it.

My only recurring problem with the StreetStrider so far is a couple of flat tires.

Two flats (both on the front tires) in seven months isn't a big deal. I'd like to have zero, though. Today, after getting my second flat, I got around to putting on a Schwalbe Marathon replacement tire sold by StreetStrider. I've ordered another one for the other front tire.

The Schwalbe looks and feels more substantial than the stock tires. Reading some reviews of it on Amazon, I'm expecting that it will be more puncture-resistant.

The flats have spurred me to get more competent at changing a tube. I now carry extra tubes, tire levers, and a CO2 inflator in a pack when I ride. It's tough to use a hand pump to get a tube up to the 70 pounds of pressure I like to ride at.

I keep intending to get out my GoPro camera and make some videos of me doing my senior citizen StreetStriding. Before summer is over, I vow. I want to show the uphills I'm now able to handle, since this was one of my concerns early on: how well does the StreetStrider go uphill?

Not as well as my 24 speed mountain bike, for sure. But good enough to make it up almost all of the slopes I encounter at Minto Brown Park. Anyway, this is first and foremost a fun exercise machine, not a touring bicycle.

(That said, recently I got an email from someone who told me he rode his StreetStrider 108 miles in Florida. I told him that I was impressed. Yeah, Florida is flat. But 108 miles! The farthest I've gone at one time is 10 miles.)

Salem Health, represented by Norm Gruber, and the City of Salem, represented by Kimberli Fitzgerald.

Everybody else who testified -- I counted seven, watching on CCTV -- were strongly in favor of affirming the decision of the Historic Landmarks Commission to preserve Howard Hall, a historic building that is the last structure remaining from the School of the Blind.

This included Curt Fisher, who spoke for the South Central Area Neighborhood Association (SCAN) where Howard Hall is located.

Fisher said this was a David and Goliath situation, with powerful Salem Health up against ordinary concerned citizens. Yet the process worked, he noted, adding that the City Council should respect the wisdom, talent, and expertise of those who volunteer to serve on the HIstoric Landmarks Commission.

He pointed out that Salem Hospital (part of Salem Health) wants many more parking spaces than is customary under City rules. So there is plenty of room to put an adaptive playground and commerative garden elsewhere on the property, rather than demolishing Howard Hall and using its footprint for those uses.

In other words, Howard Hall can be preserved and an adaptive playground can be built by Salem Health. This isn't an either/or situation.

However, a representative of the Oregon Council for the Blind, Willamette Chapter, testified that they have met five times with Salem Hospital staff. The hospital refuses to consider preserving Howard Hall, a building that has deep significance for the blind community.

Thus Salem Health and Salem Hospital came off looking like money-grubbing corporate meanies. Again, there was zero support for demolishing Howard Hall from anyone but themselves.

Not counting City officials. But they made the same flawed arguments that the Historic Landmarks Commission rejected. In fact, as I said in my previous blog post, the same person made the same flawed arguments.

A City staff report recommending reversal of the Historic Landmarks Commission decision was written by the same person who initially recommended approval of Salem Hospital's application. Namely, Kimberli Fitzgerald. This isn't immediately obvious, since the staff report to the Mayor and City Council is through City Manager Norris, from Community Development Director Glenn Gross, signed by Urban Planning Administrator LIsa Anderson-Olgivie, and, lastly, prepared by Senior HIstoric Planner Kimberli Fitzgerald. Yes, the same person who made the same points in a staff report to the HIstoric Landmarks Commission (HLC) before the commission voted 6-0 to reject the staff recommendation and deny Salem Hospital's demolition request. Again, this looks really bad -- to not have a new person take a fresh look at the application prior to the City Council review of the HLC decision.

Here's something else that looked really bad at last night's council meeting: Mayor Peterson ended the hearing somewhere around 10:30 pm, after people had waited four hours to testify about Howard Hall.

I'm pretty sure not everybody who wanted to got to testify. Pretty damn frustrating after sitting there since 6:30 pm; the Howard Hall hearing didn't even start until 9:50 pm. Today Geoffrey James, a local architect who favors preserving Howard Hall, left this comment on my previous post.

Council knows that the way to deal with the "public" is not to start this "public" hearing until late at night. Then just hear from the "proponents" i.e. Salem Health CEO etc., then go into recess to discuss with attorney the Mayor's conflict of interest with the huge photos of her that Salem Health published in the paper. Then on resuming to announce it's getting late and pass a motion to continue the "public" hearing for two weeks. That way the opposition to the demolition may not show up again, after being subjected to waiting 4 hours in council chambers (not even allowed to stand!) until some of them, including the blind, have to go home. Then tell them they will not get to speak. What an outrageous strategy to defeat the "public".

Well, I did count seven opponents of demolishing Howard Hall who got three minutes to testify after the Salem Health CEO.

The City attorney asked to speak with the Mayor in private after Warner said Peterson should recuse herself because of a conflict of interest.

When the meeting resumed and Peterson claimed she didn't have to recuse herself, the hearing abruptly ended with no additional testimony from other proponents of preserving Howard Hall. Instead, as noted above, people who had waited four hours to have their say were told to go home and come back on July 28.

This is no way to run a City Council meeting. Mayor Peterson chose the convenience of herself and other City officials over the convenience of ordinary citizens, saying that the hearing needed to be closed so other business on the agenda could be completed.

Maybe that was the reason.

Or maybe the Mayor and City of Salem staff knew that if more people were allowed to testify in opposition to demolishing Howard Hall, the more difficult it would be to vote in favor of this bad idea -- given that no one other than Salem Health wants to tear down the historic building.

Lastly, as a continuation to this post I'll include two letters from Geoffrey James and Gene Pfeifer regarding the feasibility of "repurposing" Howard Hall. At last night's hearing City staff erroneously said this had been properly examined and rejected by Salem Health.

July 13, 2014

Tomorrow night, Monday, July 14, the Salem City Council will make a decision about Howard Hall -- a historic building that is the last structure remaining of the School for the Blind.

Salem's Mayor, Anna Peterson, is fond of saying that she and the eight city councilors are dedicated to making fair and transparent decisions that reflect the broad community interest.

Well, talk is cheap.

What counts are values expressed in actions. So what the City Council does at tomorrow's meeting will tell us much more about what counts at City Hall than the platitudes spouted by city officials.

As I blogged about recently, I'm worried that the council will overturn the 6-0 vote of the Historic Landmarks Commission to prevent Howard Hall from being demolished by Salem Hospital, which wants the land for a parking lot.

Legally, the Historic Landmarks Commission decision seems on solid ground. But I'm a long-time land use activist. Once politicians insert themselves into appeals of land use decisions, crazy things can happen.

My wife and I experienced this when we led our neighborhood's five year fight against a proposed subdivision on high value farmland that threatened surface water and surrounding wells. Two of the three Marion County Commissioners (Sam Brentano and Patti Milne) kept ignoring facts and the law, leading to repeated 2-1 votes in favor of the developers.

LUBA (Land Use Board of Appeals) and Circuit Court appeals finally stopped the subdivision. It took a lot of time, effort, and money, though, to right the wrong caused by elected officials making bad decisions.

Mayor Peterson and the eight city councilors have a duty to uphold the law, not do the bidding of special interests. Unfortunately, past decisions at City Hall show that when push comes to shove, findings of fact and conclusions of law are shouldered aside so Salem's version of "the 1%" can get what they want.

(1) In both cases a volunteer citizen group recommended that a valuable resource be preserved. The Shade Tree Advisory Committee said the trees should be pruned, not removed. The HIstoric Landmarks Commission said Howard Hall should be preserved, not demolished.

(2) In both cases a large corporation wanted the City to do something that ordinary citizens objected to. Over thirty people testified against killing the U.S. Bank trees, including expert arborists; only U.S. Bank officials were in favor of removing them. The neighborhood association where Howard Hall is located wants to save the building; Salem Hospital wants to tear it down.

(3) In both cases, almost certainly, backroom dealmaking with special interests is going on outside of public view. I am certain this happened with the U.S. Bank trees, because I made public records requests that proved this happened. Given that the City Council decided to review the HIstoric Landmarks Commission decision on its own, saving Salem Hospital the trouble of filing an appeal, it sure looks like special interest lobbying is going on behind the scenes -- just as it did with the U.S. Bank tree decision.

What remains to be seen is how groupthink'y the Salem City Council is this time around. With the U.S. Bank trees case, city councilors were amazingly passive, taking at face value assertions by the Public Works Director which were factually and legally wrong.

With Howard Hall, we have a staff report prepared for the city council by the same person whose recommendation was rejected by the HIstoric Landmarks Commission. As I said in my previous blog post:

A City staff report recommending reversal of the Historic Landmarks Commission decision was written by the same person who initially recommended approval of Salem Hospital's application. Namely, Kimberli Fitzgerald. This isn't immediately obvious, since the staff report to the Mayor and City Council is through City Manager Norris, from Community Development Director Glenn Gross, signed by Urban Planning Administrator LIsa Anderson-Olgivie, and, lastly, prepared by Senior HIstoric Planner Kimberli Fitzgerald. Yes, the same person who made the same points in a staff report to the HIstoric Landmarks Commission (HLC) before the commission voted 6-0 to reject the staff recommendation and deny Salem Hospital's demolition request. Again, this looks really bad -- to not have a new person take a fresh look at the application prior to the City Council review of the HLC decision.

I'm a frequent and vociferous critic of the Mayor, City Manager, and City Council. For good reason. Because they have a habit of making bad decisions for no good reasons.

Still, I'm an optimist. We all learn from our mistakes.

Though I'm worried that the City Council will overturn the Historic Landmarks Commission (HLC) decision for no good reason, I will be pleased to admit that my anxiety was misplaced if the Mayor and city councilors do the right thing tomorrow night, affirming the HLC decision.

Have you noticed that there has been no recent coverage of this issue in our daily newspaper of record? We'll see if they cover it tomorrow -- too late for a lot of folks to plan to attend. In the good old days when we had a real paper there would have been many articles about this. Reporters would have interviewed members of the Historic Landmarks Commission who voted 6 - 0 to preserve Howard Hall and members of the South Central Association of Neighbors who are passionate about not losing a neighborhood landmark. Sadly, our daily paper is in league with Salem Hospital, a major advertiser, to keep the lid on this issue and hope that no one notices until Howard Hall is gone.

July 11, 2014

Man, I so love the Oregon Country Fair in Veneta. Every year my wife and I feel joyful and rejuvenated when we attend on our usual opening Friday.

If only the entire freaking United States could be this loving, this uninhibited, this creative, this yes-yes-yes (a Fair slogan) ALL of the time.

After parking our car, we came across a talented couple outside the entrance gate who reminded us that everyday reality is much enhanced during the three days of the fair.

We had bought tickets months ago in anticipation of our annual secular-sacred July pilgrimage to a land where a fierce friendly creature greets visitors. I guess "the dragon ate my ticket" would have been a good excuse if I'd misplaced my entry pass.

Their bike seemed way too big for them. Or they were too smal for the bike. Or something. No need to figure stuff out at the Oregon Country Fair. Just flow with ...whatever.

Lucky us! A parade passed by soon after we started our tour of the winding paths that lead through the fair.

I was able, but just barely, to squeeze into the always-popular belly dancing viewing area. The only place to stand was right in front of a tree. But that only enhanced the view.

Because it seemed like the beautiful woman was dancing with the tree. Or the tree was dancing with her.

Briefly she and the tree became one.

An Oregon Country Fair path-side conversation between friends.

This sure seemed like a possible purchase -- Laurel's favorite colors. But she passed it by. So many booths, so little time. The cloudy rainless 80 degree'ish weather today was perfect for pleasant browsing. Not nearly as hot as it sometimes is at the fair.

A broom danced on top of this booth. Which was selling brooms.

The whole ambience of the Oregon Country Fair is like no other, in large part because of the beautiful natural setting.

Marvelous colors stand out against the often-mossy greenery.

We encountered Matt Trickey, who works at LifeSource Natural Foods here in Salem. He was peddling "fossillized mushrooms." OK... Whatever, Matt. He tried to explain what they were to me, but wasn't making any sense. Matt might have been under the influence of non-fossillized mushrooms.

Or maybe I was. Because I could completely get what this guy was telling me.

This was one of my favorite booths. I could live happily in this simple booth-cottage. (If it had high-speed Internet. And a big screen TV.)

Here's another high-tech/low-tech juxtaposition. A kid was perusing his iPad, I think it was, from inside a woven wood sculpture.

The drumming circle was filled with happy energy. This guy with a flute accompanied the drummers skillfully.

Another parade!

The parade's band members ended up at Stage Left to be part of a vaudeville show. During the show a cast member asked the audience, "What's the most boring town!" Naturally I yelled out "Salem" as loud as I could.

So sad... we had to leave in late afternoon.

Along with Nancy and Steve, friends from Salem who came to the fair with us.

Walking back to our car, I came across a "throne" that gave me regal ideas. I liked the notion of blessing admiring throngs with a vague dismissive gesture of my kingly hand.

Initially throngless, I managed to find one peasant willing to stand by my throne and receive her lord's blessing. (Just barely willing, though, judging from her expression.)

July 10, 2014

An Oregonian (even more, a Salemian!) was first in line when a store selling legal marijuana opened its door yesterday in Vancouver, Washington.

The state on Monday issued its first batch of retail licenses, giving two to establishments in Vancouver. One, New Vansterdam, plans to open Friday. The other, Main Street Marijuana, opened Wednesday in downtown Vancouver.

And standing first in line for a few grams of Washington pot? An Oregonian.

"I know I'm going to be paying way more than I probably should," said Mark Edwards, 42, a tie-dye clad Salem man who arrived at 3:30 a.m. to take his place at the head of the line. "I'm willing to pay more to be part of history."

Understood, Mark. This really was a historic moment.

Back in the 60's, when paranoia about being busted for pot possession was rampant in the San Francisco Bay area where I went to college from 1966-71, none of us stoners could have believed that marijuana would be legal in two states by 2014.

I sure hope -- and expect -- that it will be three states by the end of this year, Oregon having joined Colorado and Washington.

It feels like this will happen.

New Approach Oregon almost certainly has enough signatures to qualify its legalization initiative for the November ballot. The two Paul Stanford-backed marijuana measures have failed to qualify, which is great news: voters would have been confused by competing initiatives trying to do the same thing in different ways.

Washington state has started to reap the financial reward of taxing marijuana sales. Just as with Colorado, citizens here will see that life in our neighbor state to the north hasn't become Reefer Madness with the legalization of an already widely-consumed herb.

It's great to see that New Approach Oregon has found what seems to be the social policy sweet spot between Stanford's excessively liberal legalization approach that was voted down by Oregonians in 2012, and the excessively regulated approach taken in Washington state.

Leading up to Vancouver's opening, a leading national advocate for marijuana legalization stopped by The Oregonian on Tuesday to advocate for New Approach Oregon's legalization proposal.

Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of Drug Policy Alliance, [praised the] proposal as "the new gold standard" for a number of reasons:

Marijuana taxes in Oregon would be lower than Washington's and Colorado's, which he said would allow legal business owners to compete with black market sellers — not to mention give a price break for buyers here.

...Unlike in Washington, Oregon's proposal does not include impaired driving restrictions. That's a good thing, Nadelmann said, because chemical tests for THC are not accurate enough to be effective.

People also would be allowed to grow cannabis at home, while Washington's law does not.

New Approach Oregon also has a report on Nadelmann's glowing opinion about our state's marijuana legalization effort.

So far little opposition has surfaced to the New Approach Oregon initiative. I doubt there will be much, aside from the usual suspects -- such as Clatsop County DA Josh Marquis, who is the go-to guy for reporters who need a quote from the "other side."

Possession of less than an ounce of marijuana is considered a violation that doesn't result in arrest or jail.

"We are talking about Oregon, not Texas, not Georgia and not the federal government," said Clatstop County District Attorney Josh Marquis.

Marquis said New Approach Oregon representatives have misstated Oregon's record on marijuana arrests given that most are violations. The group cited a Oregon State Police report that showed 12,808 marijuana-related arrests in 2012; the vast majority were for violation-level offenses.

Most of the statistics of “arrests and citations” are simple citations. They are like speeding or not signaling the right way. They take very little resources.

Reality: More than half of the drug-related arrests made in Oregon are for marijuana. (Source: Oregon State Police, page 4-10). In 2012, the most recent year for which data is available, 21,856 people were arrested for drug crimes, and 12,808 of them were for marijuana.

Marijuana-related policing has a huge cost. Police time is required to make to search, arrest, book, issue a ticket or lock someone up. In addition to the financial cost, every marijuana arrest and citation takes time that a police officer could have used patrolling a neighborhood, preventing an assault or solving a violent crime. Then there’s also the cost to the individuals, who will now have a marijuana crime on their records and may have trouble finding a job.

Treating adult marijuana use as a crime is a drain on our resources.

-------------------------------

Myth: We don't arrest people for marijuana use in Oregon

Reality: Police bust people for marijuana use in Oregon all the time. According to the Oregon State Police, police arrested 12,808 people for marijuana in 2012, the most recent year for which data is available. (Source: Oregon State Police, (PDF) page 4-10). That’s like one person every 41 minutes. These arrest numbers have risen by 45 percent in recent years, according to a report by the ACLU on state crime reports.

An analysis by the Oregon ACLU of Oregon State Police data (PDF) also found that 90 percent of the marijuana possession incidents in 2010 involved less than one ounce.

Oregonians are constantly being arrested for marijuana use.

Plus, NORML reports that possession of less than an ounce of marijuana carries with it an automatic six-month Oregon driver's license suspension. That's a big deal. So it really isn't akin to a traffic ticket, as opponents of marijuana legalization sometimes claim. Nobody loses their driver's license for a minor moving violation.

It's time to legalize marijuana. Weed is way safer than alcohol. Fewer people drinking and more people imbibing pot would make for a much healthier and happier Oregon.

July 09, 2014

After watching the Salem (Oregon) City Council, Mayor, and City Manager make a series of really bad decisions, I'm worried that the council meeting next Monday, July 14, will result in another screwed-up vote.

This time, to overturn the unanimous HIstoric Landmarks Commission decision to deny Salem Hospital's request to demolish Howard Hall, a Salem Historic Landmark that was part of the Oregon School for the Blind before it closed.

Salem Community Vision is calling on people to come to the meeting and tell the councilors, Save Howard Hall.

Please mark your calendar and plan to attend the Salem City Council meeting on Monday, July 14th at 6:30 p.m.where the demolition of a designated Local Salem Landmark is on the agenda for a public hearing and Council action

Salem Community Vision opposes the demolition of Howard Hall on the former Oregon School for the Blind property now owned by Salem Hospital. We agree with the Salem Historic Landmarks Commission (HLC) that voted 6 - 0 with one abstention in June to deny Salem Hospital's application to tear down Howard Hall.

The HLC found that the application from Salem Hospital did not meet three of the four requirements necessary for them to approve the application. Salem Hospital did not show that ...

• The value to the community of the proposed use of the property outweighs the value of retaining the designated historic resource on the present site.

• The designated historic resource is not capable of generating a reasonable economic return and the demolition is economically necessary.

• No prudent and feasible alternative exists to rehabilitate and reuse the designated resource in its present location.

Salem Community Vision will ask the City Council to uphold the decision of the HLC, and we will suggest that Salem Hospital needs to reissue a Request for Proposals to re-purpose Howard Hall in a way that will benefit the Hospital and the community.

Here's a six-point summary of what concerns me.

(1) An approval decision could already have been made. Mayor Peterson is wrongly proud of her "consensus" city councilors. Meaning, they usually vote without much discussion in lockstep, obviously having reached a decision before a public meeting even occurs. This violates the spirit of Oregon's public meeting law, if not the letter of it.

(2) The City Council "called up" the Historic Landmarks Commission denial for review. I'm a long-time land use activist. I've never seen this before -- an appeal body deciding to review a land use decision on its own, without an aggrieved party appealing (in this case, Salem Hospital). This looks really bad. And, as noted in (1), it may be really bad. The fix could be in.

(3) A City staff report recommending reversal of the Historic Landmarks Commission decision was written by the same person who initially recommended approval of Salem Hospital's application. Namely, Kimberli Fitzgerald. This isn't immediately obvious, since the staff report to the Mayor and City Council is through City Manager Norris, from Community Development Director Glenn Gross, signed by Urban Planning Administrator LIsa Anderson-Olgivie, and, lastly, prepared by Senior HIstoric Planner Kimberli Fitzgerald. Yes, the same person who made the same points in a staff report to the HIstoric Landmarks Commission (HLC) before the commission voted 6-0 to reject the staff recommendation and deny Salem Hospital's demolition request. Again, this looks really bad -- to not have a new person take a fresh look at the application prior to the City Council review of the HLC decision.

(4) Salem Health, which runs Salem Hospital, isn't a warm and fuzzy bunch of local doctors and nurses. This shouldn't come as news to anyone: health care is big business these days, as it has been for a long time. I worked in health planning/policy analysis for quite a few years in the 70's and 80's. The corporatization of health care was well along then; it is much more evident now. Salem Health is a large corporation with lots of employees and lots of political influence. Its motives need to be viewed as skeptically as those of any other large corporation.

(5) Salem Hospital already has demolished one adaptive playground for a parking lot. The Salem Breakfast on Bikes blog has done some great reporting on this issue, pointing out that while Salem Hospital currently touts its plan to replace Howard Hall with an adaptive playground for "alter-abled" children, they tore down another adaptive playground that was part of Bush School when the hospital took the property over for a parking lot (see #4 above).

Last month there was a history note in the paper, and it turns out there's some relevant recent history in it.

The Hospital has already demolished one adaptive playground for a parking lot!

You'd think that if the Hospital were so sure of the vast community value in an adaptive playground, they would have taken greater efforts to preserve the first one or at least to rebuild it elsewhere nearby.

But there's another history here. In the first round of urban renewal and hospital expansion, Salem lost a bunch of great old houses along Oak Street to the east of the hospital. A couple were relocated elsewhere in the city, but most were demolished.

The Hospital has a clear pattern of demolishing things in the neighborhood for its parking lots, clinics, and additional hospital buildings.

It's the soybeans, wheat, and second-growth of urban monoculture.

The same impulse, the same paradigm, in fact, that gives rise to antibiotic resistant bacteria - think about the parallels on micro- and macro-scales! It all started out innocently enough, but we've now learned there are big problems with the ostensible "efficiency" of systems that suppress diversity.

Yeah, diversity. On the Blind School parcel, there's still plenty of room for a playground and garden adjacent to a preserved Howard Hall.

We should remember that the plan includes an application for 87 parking stalls above the maximum permitted by Salem's already generous code.

If the Hospital is serious about a playground, they can site it where the 87 stalls would go, preserving Howard Hall for future generations and turning back from an excess of surface parking.

Above it all, though, we should remember that cities are complex organisms, and like biological organisms and systems, they function best with elements of diversity and jumble. Long term success sometimes requires things that look like short-term inefficiency.

A monoculture of parking lots and cars, and of single-use institutional campuses, is harmful, in more ways than one.

Your Sunday, June 22, editorial, deceptively titled “Honor the history of Howard Hall,” was demeaning and dismissive toward the entire blind community. The piece stereotypes blind and visually impaired people as ignorant and helpless.

As a totally blind individual, I strongly object to the editorial’s characterization of Howard Hall. The idea that we would not be able to appreciate Howard Hall if it were restored or that restoring the building “would do nothing for blind Oregonians” is ludicrous.

I attended the Oregon School for the Blind for many years and my room was in Howard Hall. I went on to attend Lewis and Clark College and became a businesswoman.

Howard Hall is a culturally and architecturally significant work. This building is Salem’s only known building that was designed by Oregon’s famous architect John V. Bennes. It is clear to me that Salem has torn down too much of its history.

Speaking as a former president of the American Council of the Blind of Oregon, I and most of my colleagues support the Salem Historic Landmarks Commission’s finding that the Salem Hospital has not submitted a plan that replaces the significance of Howard Hall as a historical and cultural landmark.

July 07, 2014

Ever since I moved to Salem in 1977, Enchanted Forest has been a regular must-visit for my family. Notably my daughter Celeste, born in 1972, and now my granddaughter Evelyn, age 7.

Visiting us this week from their home in southern California along with husband/father Patrick, they were as shocked and saddened as I was to hear of the death last Saturday of Humpty Dumpty -- a beloved feature of the park for as long as I can remember.Download Humpty Dumpty has great fall at Enchanted Forest

Reportedly two men climbing on the wall were responsible for Dumpty's demise. I'm not sure what the penalty is for negligent eggslaughter. Hopefully they will be made to pay for this heinous crime against a character in a children's nursery rhyme.

Today we all went to Enchanted Forest. Naturally we paid our respects to Humpty Dumpty. The remains, thankfully, had been removed. We were pleased to see that Dumpty's rebirth had already been set in motion.

I believe the man on the right is Roger Tofte, the creator of Enchanted Forest, and hero of this poem placed at the site. Tofte was born in 1930, so this makes him about 84 years old. If this indeed was him, he is a testament to the power of staying youthful through bringing joy to young and old.

Many other Enchanted Forest visitors shared our pleasure at finding the Humpty Dumpty resurrection work proceeding so quickly. Next visit, I'm sure, Dumpty will be back as good as new.

We had a great time at the park, as we always do. The BIg Timber Log Ride was a favorite of everybody's. Here's Patrick, Evelyn, and Celeste captured by the Log Ride camera.

And below is Laurel, my wife, and me. I like how my hair blossomed out in the first stage of the 40 foot watery drop at the end of the ride.

Laurel weenied out by using one of the plastic ponchos offered to Log Riders (front person gets wet the most). She also is closing her eyes. I would happily have sat in front, but the ride attendant said the heavier person needed to be in back, and that definitely was me.

July 04, 2014

No, wait... I'm 65 and retired. Every day is a vacation now. (Yeah, right; if you believe that, just wait until you retire.)

Laurel and I got back last night from a family reunion -- her side of the family -- in Madison, Indiana. Madison is on the Ohio River, a bridge away from northern Kentucky. We stayed at Clifty Falls State Park.

Not surprisingly, I saw (1) cliffs, and (2) falls, at the park. This is a view from an overlook of the Big Falls (on the right). It's straight down from where I was standing. Getting to the base of the falls requires an arduous lengthy hike up the streambed -- something some relatives did and I passed up.

What struck us as soon as we arrived -- impossible to miss -- was the presence of a coal-fired power plant adjacent to the state park. I kept thinking, "No way would this be allowed in Oregon." But, hey, coal used to be king in this part of the country.

Now Green Oregonians like me hope it willl be deposed in favor of renewable sources of energy. Cleaner sources. I was told that scrubbers capture most of the pollutants from the center stack, the only one which is operative now. Well, carbon dioxide is a pollutant too, a really dangerous one.

I found the power plant chimneys strangely fascinating. Evil, yet also a reflection of well-intentioned human ignorance. The Clifty Creek facility was built in the 1950's, before global warming had become a concern.

The chimneys, Wikipedia tells me, are some of the tallest in the world. This photo was taken as the sun was setting with thunder clouds as a backdrop.

I took a short hike to an observation towr our first morning at Clifty Falls State Park. Naturally a selfie was in order. The black stuff in the bottom left background is coal. From our room we could watch yellow bulldozer "pusher-bees" buzzing around that area much of the day, busily pushing the coal into a tall pile from where, I assume, it somehow found its way into the power plant.

On our last day, six of us took a tour of the historic Lanier Mansion. Our guide was both highly knowledgeable and entertaining. Great sense of humor. I think he is the blob on the spiral staircase leading to the upper floors. Hadn't realized at the time that the peak looks like half of the yin-yang symbol. Maybe the architect was a closet Taoist in a 19th century Christian land.

Here's the family reunion gang. Minus me, since I was taking the photo. (Laurel is in blue on the left.) Lilly, the little girl in the middle, has one of her "Carrie" looks going on. Her mother, standing behind her, is a professional photographer. She is fortunate to have a daughter with a thousand faces. Lilly is highly expressive.

I enjoyed our five day stay in southern Indiana. The countryside is charming and very attractive. Anyone who thinks that all there is in Indiana is flat corn fields is way wrong.

But in my opinion, anyone who says that Oregon isn't the most beautiful state is even more wrong. Sitting on the left side of the plane as the Delta flight prepared to land in Portland, we were treated to a great sunset view of Mt. Hood.

Sure, there's no place like home. I understand that almost everyone in the United States likes where they live. Yet after spending 43 years here, I can confidently say "there's no place like Oregon."

Meaning, no better place.

We keep trying to think of a state we'd rather live in. Haven't come up with one. That said, please don't move here. Remember Governor Tom McCall's adage: "Come visit; don't stay."

July 02, 2014

Remember when we trusted reporters to search out the truth without regard for who might be responsible for nefarious goings-on found at the end of the trail?

I do.

Now I readily admit that my view of investigative reporting in this country may be through rose-colored glasses. Maybe journalistics never were as dogged in their pursuit of wrongdoing by government functionaries, business executives, elected officials, and others as I imagined they were.

Still, it is unarguable that print and television media have gone downhill in this regard.

There are good reasons why. For example, financial pressures caused by declining readership have put pressure on newspapers to be more entertaining in this age of competition from a wide variety of free Internet information sources.

Our local community newspaper, the Salem Statesman Journal, has become a lot "frothier" compared to how I remember it in the first decades after I moved here in 1977. Indepth analytic stories about important local issues are few and far between. Mostly the news and editorial pages parrot positions of City officials and the Chamber of Commerce.

The Statesman Journal web site has become a clone of USA Today's. This reflects its position as part of the Gannett media empire. Independent community newspapers are a dying breed.

Sadly, so is independent investigative reporting.

This is a core message in Charles Lewis' Politico piece, "Why I left 60 Minutes: The big networks say they care about uncovering the truth. That's not what I saw." The article is based on his book, "935 Lies: The Future of Truth and the Decline of America's Moral Integrity."

Here's some excerpts from the Politico piece.

Ernest Hemingway famously said that “the most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shock-proof shit detector. This is the writer’s radar and all great writers have had it.” He was talking about the novelist, I suppose. But his dictum applies to the investigative journalist, in spades. It is the born reporter who insistently, even masochistically, clings to the notion that things are not what they outwardly seem and pursues the hidden truth in any situation even when other people prefer to ignore it. For most people this simply is not normal human activity

...But when I embarked on this profession, I was in many ways prepared for all that—for the threats, the lawsuits and the general hostility. That was just the cost of doing business. What I didn’t foresee, what floored me and frustrated me, was that sometimes the biggest obstacles in the pursuit of what Carl Bernstein calls “the best obtainable version of the truth” came from the inside—from my bosses and my bosses’ bosses who, despite their professed support, had no real interest in publishing the hardest-hitting stories.

...But I had also seen things at two networks that had troubled me profoundly: nationally important stories not pursued; well-connected, powerful people and companies with questionable policies and practices that were not investigated precisely because of the connections and the power they boasted.

...Many people, then and since, have asked me what exactly I was thinking—after all, I was walking away from a successful career full of future promise. Certainly, quitting 60 Minutes was the most impetuous thing I have ever done. But looking back, I realize how I’d changed. Beneath my polite, mild-mannered exterior, I’d developed a bullheaded determination not to be denied, misled or manipulated.

And more than at any previous time, I had had a jarring epiphany that the obstacles on the way to publishing the unvarnished truth had become more formidable internally than externally. I joked to friends that it had become far easier to investigate the bastards—whoever they are—than to suffer through the reticence, bureaucratic hand-wringing and internal censorship of my employer.

...Just weeks after I quit, I decided to begin a nonprofit investigation reporting organization—a place dedicated to digging deep beneath the smarminess of Washington’s daily-access journalism into the documents few reporters seemed to be reading, which I knew from experience would reveal broad patterns of cronyism, favoritism, personal enrichment and outrageous (though mostly legal) corruption. My dream was a journalistic utopia—an investigative milieu in which no one would tell me who or what not to investigate.

Well, that's my dream also. As a blogger, I answer to no one. (I also get paid by no one.) So I get to investigate whoever or whatever I want.

Like City of Salem public officials.

My exposé of how five large beautiful healthy downtown trees were cut down for no good reason, titled "Outrage: the true story of Salem's U.S. Bank tree killings," is a great example of how a single determined person can reveal the truth about backroom dealings between government officials and well-connected business types (in this case, a city Public Works Director and a bank president who was the incoming president of the Chamber of Commerce).

I've been told that the Salem Statesman Journal, our above-mentioned community newspaper, is still planning to do a story about my report -- though it now has been two months since I sat down with an investigative reporter from the paper and talked about the report.

Hopefully a story will be published.

It would be disturbing if our local newspaper passed up on a chance to do an investigative story about disturbing City Hall goings-on when the reporting already has been done by someone, me, complete with copies of public records documents that back up every assertion I made in "Outrage."

Optimist that I am, I look forward to the Statesman Journal dedicating itself to doing what Charles Lewis talked about in his Politico piece: looking into "broad patterns of cronyism, favoritism, personal enrichment and outrageous (though mostly legal) corruption."

I found this stuff happening in Salem through the public records documents I analyzed. But it shouldn't only be bloggers who are doing the investigative journalism in this town. Or elsewhere in the United States. The mainstream media needs to get back to being an independent watchdog of truth.

Here's something that both pleased and bothered me about a recent Salem City Council meeting.

A city councilor, Laura Tesler, warned people not to trust "bloggers" -- who, almost certainly, prominently included me, since I've been the most frequent and vociferous blogger critic of decisions made by city officials.

Yet when I asked Tesler (and other city officials) to point out significant errors in any of my blog posts about City Hall actions, they haven't responded to my "put up or shut up" challenge. So I'm pleased that folks at the City of Salem are aware that the truth is getting out through my blog about the crazy stuff they're doing, and so far have been unable to document any errors in my truth-telling.

What bothered me was the almost sickly sweet praise given to Statesman Journal reporting at the same city council meeting.

This indicated to me that our community newspaper is giving city officials too much of a free pass, failing to do investigative and analytic journalism rather than merely reporting on City of Salem press releases and staff reports.

Again, it shouldn't be up to us bloggers to tell the public what their supposed public servants are doing for them. And, I have to add, to them. I'm one unpaid retired guy. The Statesman Journal is a whole freaking newspaper with lots of reporters, backed up by the massive Gannett Corporation.

The Statesman Journal has the capacity to do great investigative journalism. The question is, does it want to?